Lightcube was initiated by Suraj Prasad and Anuj Malhotra in April 2012 with the intention to deeply investigate the cinematic traditions of the country and the world. To pursue its ambitions, Lightcube has organised close to three hundred and fifty single screenings across India in the six years of its existence, designed and curated visual installations and exhibitions as well as organised five film festivals. Lightcube has published ten issues of a quarterly newspaper of visual culture called Umbra, which is subscribed by major media institutions across India as well as individuals. Lightcube has also published ten issues of online film criticism magazine called Projectorhead.

Lightcube aims to democratise exhibition, dissemination of visual storytelling and provide curatorial control to communities. We work towards creating participative cultural expressions and archive stories and mythologies that may help an individual have a sense of identity and dignity thereby empowering a new cultural paradigm.

Umbra is a quarterly newspaper on screen culture published by Lightcube out of India. Its pages feature major developments in the sectors of film preservation, film archiving, film society activism, funding for alternative films and film literature. Its focus is to establish a broad narrative or a lineage between the state of these areas in the past and their condition in the present. To this aim, Umbra runs a number of interviews, essays, program notes, festival coverage, listings and annotated filmographies in its issues.

This has been the ambition for Umbra for the last seven years of its existence. As a publication, it has strived to illuminate areas and aspects of the cultural sphere that often remain shrouded in darkness. In the past, Umbra has published issues on cinematic depictions of migration, the 'others' in a society, city-spaces and the divine in popular culture. Umbra is run and managed by a small team of people, with no institutional funding or grant support, and no sponsorship.

Lightcube has recently expanded its publishing activities by publishing Modernism by Other Means: The Films of Amit Dutta. We are currently developing our publishing processes to bring out more relevant and enriching literature.

Support Umbra to allow us to continue doing the work we do, visit Lightcube